And while Nisus Writer Express has a conventional section feature, Mellel currently does not. In Nisus Writer Express, changes made to styles in a given document affect only that document this makes it possible to define and save a variety of differently styled document templates for different purposes. Only global (application-wide) styles are editable, so defining and editing a common style-Body Text, for example-differently in various documents is not an option. Unfortunately, Mellel’s implementation of styles is the program’s biggest weakness. Styles also help you achieve consistency in your formatting and allow you to reformat documents later by simply redefining styles. Using styles to format the parts of a word processing document is more efficient than using ad hoc formats. And with Mellel’s support for user-definable document variables, it’s clear that the program is up to the task of creating complex structured documents without a hint of feature bloat. In addition, Mellel 1.8 offers unequaled footnote and endnote options, a bibliographic database, and table-of-contents generation-features scholars will welcome. You can also view numbered levels reflecting document structure as an outline in a separate pane. You can autonumber document parts (or objects such as tables and pictures) on several levels each level can have its own format, including literal text strings, numbers, and variables. The program’s distinctive excellence is its extraordinarily powerful and flexible autonumbering system. Nonetheless, where Mellel delivers, it really delivers. Its idiosyncratic user interface makes sense once you get to know the application, but you may find that figuring out critical features such as styles and autonumbering is impossible without reading the guide. Many users won’t mind, but Mellel 1.8 lacks macro and AppleScript support, and its find command is limited to searching only for literal text strings.
But there’s nothing intimidating about Nisus Writer Express in fact, it’s so easy to use, and its user interface is so uncluttered, that beginners will take to it like baby ducks to water. You can automate processes in AppleScript, via scripting in Perl (a language designed for manipulating text), and by using the basic but efficient Nisus Macro. The program offers nameable, editable clipboards, a three-level find-and-replace function including regular expressions (grep) and search criteria you can save, and noncontiguous selection. You can assign keyboard shortcuts to almost any command. It now has solid support for style sheets and tables, footnotes and endnotes, columns, in-line images, section formatting, and hyphenation-the features that distinguish word processors from text editors. With the release of version 2, Nisus Writer Express comes of age. Looking for a word processor that has power where you need it but doesn’t come with a lot of noisy bells and whistles you never use? Two recently released OS X word processors, Nisus Writer Express 2.1.1 and RedleX’s Mellel 1.8.2, offer competitive feature sets at very competitive prices.
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